Hubris

A few years ago a writers’ group named hubris as the word of the year. It just might be the word for 2008 also.

In John Edwards’s recent confession of his extra marital affair, he told ABC television interviewer Bob Woodruff, “In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.” He said that his rapid rise from small-town boy to national figure led him to believe “you can do whatever you want, you’re invincible, there will be no consequences.”

While the sex and the lying have provoked a media frenzy, the real story here is hubris – the self-delusion that entraps so many successful leaders in politics, business, and the church.

What happens to someone who reaches a level of power that causes him (or her) to lose their ability to see things as they really are? We speak of the loss of “moral compass,” but it goes further than that. It is a total distortion of reality such that they come to believe, like John Edwards and countless others before him, that there will be no consequences.

Eliot Spitzer in New York, President Clinton in the White House, Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling at Enron, Dennis Kozlowski at Tyco, Bernie Ebbers at WorldCom, the Rigas family at Adelphia, Jim Bakker of PTL, Ted Haggard of the National Evangelical Association, the catholic priests who abused children and the bishops who covered up for them…and on and on and on… What were they thinking? That they were invincible, that there would be no consequences, apparently.

For over thirty years, I’ve trained and coached leaders to be more successful in business, government, and non-profit organizations. The art of leadership is well researched, well documented. The Center for Creative Leadership has devoted 38 years researching what facilitates success and what derails it. Leadership training is a multi-billion industry. Millions more are spent in the search for the right leader for key positions in industry. Yet it seems that even with all that, once leaders reach these heights, for some of them at least, something happens.

John Edwards said that as he become more and more surrounded by worshipful fans and dedicated staff, he “started to believe he was special, and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.” Leaders in our society, in business, politics, and the church, are the new kings and emperors – living and working in sumptuous heavily guarded surroundings, moving around in chauffeured limos and private jets, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, getting $400 haircuts, and socializing only with others who live similarly, and rarely if ever venturing into the real world where the rest of us live.

They are often surrounded by people whose job it is to agree with them, affirm them, cater to them, laugh at their jokes, and cover their mistakes. Is it any wonder they come to believe they are invincible, that they can do anything, that there are no consequences?

So the question I keep pondering, is how do we help our leaders see the world – and themselves – as they really are? How do we keep their feet on the ground? In the midst of all the trappings of power and wealth and influence that accrue to leaders, how can they learn to pay attention to the 98% of the people who do not have those assets? How can they learn to see the world that everyone else inhabits, where work is hard, worry and pain and sometimes hunger are daily companions, and where actions have consequences?

Thanks to a tip from a blogger in the family, I recently learned about something called Postel’s Law. In 1981, internet guru and professor of computer science Jon Postel formulated what’s called Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others” (often reworded as "be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you receive"). He was encouraging computer engineers to build systems that can understand each other, “to write code that could ‘speak’ as clearly as possible yet ‘listen’ to the widest possible range of other speakers, including those who do not conform perfectly to the rules of the road,” according to NY Times technology writer Mattathias Schwartz.

There’s a lesson in there for managers. Schwartz says, “The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance — the spirit of good conversation.”

Eloquence: speaking as clearly and crisply as possible, striving to communicate concise, unambiguous messages.

Tolerance: listening without judging; listening without formulating your own rebuttal; listening with patience and empathy, even when – especially when – the other person isn’t doing a very good job of communicating, or, as Schwartz says, “conforming perfectly to the rules of the road.”

Engineers who followed Postel’s Law created an opportunity for billions of computers to connect across the globe. Managers who follow Postel’s Law in their conversations can create organizations where people can connect in a profound way and collaborate to make great things happen for their organizations.

What do you think? How can business leaders learn to "be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you receive"? How can that approach help us connect across the globe, across the board room, across the kitchen table?